Frequent Miler on the Air - SkyMiles strike back | Ep189 | 2-11-23

Episode Date: February 11, 2023

Long the laughing stock of the award travel world, recent findings in analyzing award redemption opportunities show that Delta SkyMiles is striking back against popular perception. With a new award discount for cardholders that looks to be as advertised and international business class deals connecting the dots outside of the US, it is possible to get better value out of SkyMiles than you may have otherwise assumed. Join our email list: https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ 00:40 Giant Mailbag 5:04 Mattress Running the Numbers Double-header 5:05 Wyndham Rewards points sale (too late, but good to know) https://frequentmiler.com/buy-wyndham-points-from-0-975c-each/ 7:42 Citi to offer 30% transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club https://frequentmiler.com/citi-thankyou-30-transfer-bonus-to-virgin-atlantic-feb-19-mar-18/ 14:06 What crazy thing....did Caesars Rewards do this week? 18:28 Frequent Miler 2023 Team Challenge Update 23:45 Awards we booked this week: Greg books Vacasa https://frequentmiler.com/wyndham-vacasa/ 31:05 Awards we booked this week: Gifting Hyatt free night certs https://frequentmiler.com/bet-you-didnt-know-gift-hyatt-free-night-certificates-to-someone-else/ 33:30 Main Event: SkyMiles Strikes Back 34:18 15% discount on awards for cardholders https://frequentmiler.com/no-catch-deltas-15-discount-is-real/ 44:53 Opportunities for good value using SkyMiles for premium cabin international awards https://frequentmiler.com/delta-skymiles-business-class-deals/ 57:06 Question of the Week: After Hyatt, which hotel program should be your #2 choice? Music credit: Annie Yoder

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Miler on the air starts now. Today's main event, SkyMiles Strike Back. Delta has long been the butt of our jokes regarding their worthless regarding their worthless uh miles uh

but we're gonna be talking about some opportunities that make the miles worth more than ever before uh maybe ever is too strong a word more than recently before uh first of course we have the giant mailbag today's giant giant mail comes from, I got to move this out of the way here. Okay. Today's giant mail comes from Sartuk, who says, well, actually he had quite a long email, so I'm not gonna read the whole thing, but basically he reported that he was over 524,

meaning he had signed up for more than five or more personal cards in the past 24 months. And he says, after a while, I started to wonder, oh, sorry, let me back up. First part of his email says, even though he's over 524, he was approved for a Southwest credit card while he was over 524, which as you know, with chase cards, usually you're not going to get approved for a new card if you're over 524. And then he says, after a while, I started to wonder if I was approved for the Southwest card because it was a co-branded card. I ended up applying for three more with Chase in January of 2023, two of them on the same day to avoid additional hard inquiries.

I was very happy to see that I was automatically approved for the World of Hyatt card. So again, he's over 524. Interesting. Hyatt card. He says for the IHD Premier card, I had to call in

and ask for reconsideration, which they approved. So now he's got three cards while he's over 524. He says, I decided not to be greedy or spook anyone by requesting reconsideration for the United card application, which was denied along with IHE card. So this is very interesting. We've long known that some co-branded cards sometimes seem to bypass 524 when you apply. I don't know what the magic is it doesn't seem to be

100 like that you always get past it with southwest cards for example um but you know it's great to hear that he was able to get past 524 with southwest hyatt and ihg so multiple times yeah congratulations that's a nice little win there especially considering that i i think Southwest, Hyatt, and IHG. So multiple times. Yeah. Congratulations. That's a nice little win there, especially considering that I think most probably wouldn't have even tried just assuming that it was highly unlikely anyway. But I guess it might be worth taking a swing now and then on the co-branded cards. Now, I don't think we've heard any data points like that on the ultimate rewards cards. Is that right? This is the only co-branded cards that this ever seems to happen on. That's right. There were some rumors that when you get a mailer for certain business cards that

that seemed to work, but we don't have enough data to confirm that. And then there, there used to be the ability, if you got a green check mark or something like that for under offers for you that that would bypass 524, I haven't seen one of those check marks in ages related to a credit card. So I looked the other day, I stopped looking cause I hadn't seen anything in so long. So I just looked the other day and yeah, I don't know if that's still a thing either because I didn't find anything in the Just For You offers for either my wife or I. So that's when you log into your Chase account, by the way, for those listening. Yeah. If you log in, there's a little menu and you go to the Just For You offers. So yeah, there's not much for me. Right. Anyway, so there you go. We're trying some co-branded cards when the offers are high and

by the way while recording this the ihg personal card is at an all-time high 175 000 point offer i believe yeah so that's that's pretty awesome um that is that's a great offer it's a it's a lot of points it's not a card that i find really compelling, but it's a pretty good deal, especially if you can book in four night increments and take advantage of the fourth night free. And really, even if you're not a huge fan, I mean, my goodness, those points with a reasonable redemption value, that's got to be over a thousand dollars worth of points, right? Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I like the I like that card a lot, actually, but I like the business version of it a little bit better. You know, it won't add to your 524 count if you're approved, but it doesn't have as good of a welcome bonus right now. It's like 140K at the moment. There you go. All right. Interesting. Well, speaking of hotels, let's talk about Mattress Running the Numbers. So this week's Mattress Running the Numbers, I said speaking of hotels because mattress is in the title, although I guess it depends on which one you start with. So what do we have for Mattress Running the Numbers?

Well, let's start with one that's going to be too late for listeners to do, but we'll talk about because it's going to come up again. Wyndham was out with their latest point sale where you could buy points for just under a penny each. And that died on Thursday or Friday. But anyway, before this recording was published. And you know, I went ahead and snagged, uh, the maximum allowed, which was, uh, 60,000 points for $600. I think. So why, why did you buy points? I mean, come on, Greg, you're Greg, the frequent miler. Why would you buy wind Wyndham points? I mean, come on, you're like, you stay at like the Alila Ventana. What are you doing with Wyndham points? Yeah. Yeah. You know, we've, uh, talked about before and we've published about how using Wyndham points for Vacasa vacation rentals can be a great deal.

And I was recently planning a trip to Hawaii, and I'll talk more about it when we get to the segment about awards we booked this week. But I found my Wyndham points were so valuable that I just had to have more. So that's why. Yeah. And if you don't have the Wyndham business card, that card gives eight points per dollar at gas stations. And it also gives you a 10% discount on award redemptions, which makes the points even more valuable. So you've got to check out Greg's updates to the Vicasa post this week, because there are some great Vicasa properties. I've been looking at a bunch of them lately too. And really, they're only in select areas and not every property is a good deal. There are some that

are not a great deal against cash prices, but my goodness, there are some really incredible ones out there. So it could be very, very well worth buying points the next time they have a sale. So it's worth keeping your eye on both the Vacasa details and I should mention and whether there end up being any changes to the Vacasa redemption in the coming weeks, because Wyndham is expected to release a new award chart later this month. And so I think that we're probably at least a little nervous that that may somehow affect the cost of redemption. So keep your ear to the ground in case anything changes with the cost of redemptions. But if they stay as they are now, anyway, they could certainly make it worth

buying points the next time around. Speaking of points and being speculative about your points, we have another mattress running the numbers topic because Citi is about to have a transfer bonus, a 30% transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic Miles, Virgin Atlantic Flying Club. When does that start, Greg? Starts February 19th and goes all the way till March 18th. Yeah, so that's about a month, basically. You have a whole month. So is it worth making use of this transfer bonus, particularly speculatively? So obviously, if you have an award you want to book,

it's probably worth doing this and getting 30% more value. But what about if you're not even sure? 30%, that's a pretty big bonus. Yeah, yeah. So Virgin Miles are really weird because you know using them like for sort of everyday things will often get you very middling uh value from those points um but you know there tend to be like a few things that are where you get spectacular value and um the ones that we talk about the most because they're probably the most interesting

to most of us in the US are Delta One to Europe. So that's Delta business class. If you get a nonstop flight and you find award availability, which Delta hardly ever releases to their partners, but you could book one way for only 50,000 Virgin points. So that's spectacular value right there. But even more spectacular is that you can fly in a first class from the US to Japan

for either 55,000 points one way or 60,000 points one way, depending on where in the US you're coming from and vice versa. You could fly the other direction too. Um, and that's just such a spectacular deal. And so, you know, if you're excited about that, you, you might want virgin points, but, but in, uh, but award availability is really rare for one thing. So, you know, getting, getting your points speculatively just in case you're able to book it that's a big risk the other big risk is that we've always worried that this a word um anomaly really would go away that at some point virgin would look at their word chart

and say uh well this doesn't make sense let Let's charge more for it. But there's another thing, another reason to worry now. Virgin is about to join SkyTeam. So March 2nd, they're going to join SkyTeam, at which point, who knows what they'll do with their non-SkyTeam partnerships? Are they going to keep their ANA partnership long-term? I don't know. Nobody knows. So, uh nobody knows uh so you know i would not transfer points to virgin hoping that someday you can book an ana award that would be not a good bet that would put you in what crazy thing that would that would get you mentioned what crazy thing segment right right right right yeah but you know but if you if you do manage to book one of their good value awards, that 30 percent bonus is tremendous. I mean, you would get your award so cheaply. So great use of city points if you actually can find a good value award with Virgin.

Yeah. I mean, if you actually found a first class, what would that be? So be a little over 40,000, 42,000, something like that, you know, 42, 43 ish from the West coast anyway, uh, with a 30% bonus, that would be enough to fly first class. That's just absolutely insane. Yeah. So, um, you know, so if you find it great and remember, we talked recently about the tool Seatspy that really is a United tool. But we talked about how the kind of hidden capability there is that if you're searching a route that has that United serves nonstop, but a partner also does like ANA. Then you can use Seatspy to sort of indirectly backdoor find those ANA first class seats. So if you've got a lot of flexibility and you want to take advantage of this transfer bonus and book ANA while you can,

because we don't know if it'll last, then SeatSpy could be a good tool for that. And it's a little complicated, but the gist of it is to use SeatSpy to search one of those routes. And if you see seats for 121,000 miles, you know, those are going to be in a first class. You'll want to double check it at United. So hopefully you're followed along with some complicated steps there and two second explanation. But but that could be an amazing use and one that could be worth looking for if you've always had this on your bucket list, because if you don't get this now and they do end the partnership with ANA, then your next best option is like nowhere near as good. Yeah.

And don't forget a potentially even better way of finding these is seats.ero. Oh, there you go. Which I wrote all about. It only it'll only look for word availability in the next two or three months, but you could use the tool for free. It's a nerdy tool though. I mean, you really have to understand what you're doing to get into that tool and figure things out. So in that case, you're going to be looking for United Awards, flying ANA, first class. You're not going to be looking for Virgin Atlantic Awards because those aren't going to show up there.

So you really need to know what you're doing. But, you know, if I was looking, that's where that's where I would look. You know, there was one other thing I was trying to think I was trying to talk, actually, because I knew there was something else that popped into mind and I couldn't remember what it was for the 30 percent transfer bonus. One other potentially interesting use. And I haven't checked just recently. So maybe Greg will know, but at least up through the fall, Virgin Voyages was releasing sort of like last minute ish cruises through Virgin Red. And you can move your points over to Virgin Red from Virgin

Atlantic. And the cruises were like one hundred and ten, one hundred and twenty thousand virgin points for two people. So that's also a very good value compared to their cash rates on those cruises anyway they're adult only cruises but with a 30 transfer bonus i mean that's a pretty fantastic value for your city points potentially awesome that's right that's right all right all right so i think that brings us to the challenge update is that what's next except that it actually brings us to what crazy thing. Oh my goodness. That's right.

Caesar's rewards do this week. Yeah, there we go. I skipped right over it. Nick, Nick, Nick. Okay.

Okay. So this is kind of funny. I logged into my Caesar's rewards account and I was trying to figure out how many points I had in my account. Now, Caesars Rewards is partners with Wyndham. And because I have a Wyndham earner business card with Wyndham diamond status, I have Caesars diamond status from connecting them, or at least I believed I did. But I went to my Caesars rewards page and it told me I had gold status. Okay. I was like, what? You know, where's my diamond status? Do I have to match up my accounts again or whatnot?

But then I looked in the top right corner and there's a little dropdown and I click there and there it said I had diamond status. So on the same screen, I'm seeing in one place that says I have diamond, one place I have gold. But it gets crazier because the dropdown says I have 2,400 reward credits, so points. But the page that says I have gold status says I have over 7,800. So more than almost four times as many points, or I guess three times as many points as the dropdown says. So the dropdown is, I think, correct about my status, but I'm kind of hoping the page is correct about how many points I have. Yeah. I don't know.

You know, and, and if you're like a casino loyalty person, you might think that Greg mixed up tier credits and reward points, but he didn't. I saw the screenshot and it says reward points in both places, not tier credits. And I don't think you'd have any reason to have the tier credits anyway.

So, so yeah, I mean, it just has two totally different balances and statuses i mean did you maybe have two different caesars accounts like accidentally or something i don't know i don't know i don't i don't remember creating two different ones right right if i do they're somehow right yeah that's so weird you know this whole windham caesars thing is pretty weird because i've seen some odd data points in our Freak of Mylar Insiders group.

People that have like tried to match and it just doesn't seem to take and like they'll wait. I usually say it takes about a week to match status from Wyndham to Caesars. And that's, I think, usually true. But some people wait weeks and weeks and it just doesn't seem to update. I don't know why I matched back. So I matched from Caesars Diamond back to Wyndham Diamond at the beginning of the year when I lost my Wyndham status. And then February 2nd, I matched back from Wyndham to Caesars. And three days later, my Caesars status was showing Diamond again. And so I like it just

took three days in my case. but there are people in Frequent Miler Insiders that it's been like months. And obviously, it's been months at this point, they'd probably have to do it again, because of the way the elite ears work. But But yeah, I don't understand why some people have trouble with that. Like I say some people have trouble. I mean, why the system doesn't operate properly for some people, because it's just wacky. But anyway, so there's some wackiness with Caesars. I have not found any like additional points that I wasn't due. So I don't have Greg's magic touch, I guess. But at least mine does say diamond in both places.

So I guess I'll be happy with that. Yeah. So so I swung for the fences and tried transferring my the bigger number of points to Wyndham to see if that works and we'll see what happens. I don't actually know how many I'm supposed to have. Cause I, I just don't remember. I know that I, last time I transferred from Caesars to Wyndham,

like I had more points in my Caesars account than I could transfer all in one shot. So I had to leave a few. So that's why I have any, but how many I'm supposed to have, I'm not sure. I guess we'll find out, or maybe we won't, or maybe we'll find something and not really the right answer, but it'll be something interesting nonetheless. All right. So then I, now that I skipped over that and you put us back on track, Now, I think I can officially say that it's time to talk about our frequent miler team challenge update. It is so that this is going to be a new regular segment until we have that until we actually do this year's challenge, which is going to be in late spring this year. And as you may remember, I think on the previous episode,

we talked about how we were able to book all five of us in first class on ANA from Tokyo to San Francisco using Virgin Atlantic miles. So 55,000 miles per person to book that award flight, which, and it's on their new products. We're all excited about we're going to be trying out the suite seats and just having an incredible time on that flight.

And as we told you before, we decided, all right, we're going to build our team, this year's team challenge around that flight. So since then, one of the things that's happened is Japan Airlines opened up lots of award space between the US and Japan, specifically San Francisco and Tokyo is where we were looking and were able to snag five seats so that we'll land in Japan about six days before we have to return. So now we've got the sort of what you might think are the bookends of our challenge. But no, what we decided is that we're going to do six days of the challenge in Asia and then continue on after when we get back for four days, continue the challenge in the Americas. So what and where that means exactly is to be determined as far as where we go. But what we're going to do is we have all five of us on the team playing this game. And the game is that each of us get a two day block of time where we have to plan all the travel, all the activities, all the lodging for all five of us. And there'll be constraints, there'll be budgetary constraints, and there will be a whole bunch of bonus

opportunities where people will be able to earn points for, you know, succeeding at, you know, maybe booking a incredible hotel with a Marriott category, a Marriott 35K certificate, for example. So that's the type of challenge that'll be out there. There'll be a bunch of them and we'll be able to pick and choose from and earn points and try to beat each other by planning the most spectacular trip. Try to beat each other by making sure that we all enjoy an incredible trip. Seems like a nice little challenge. I like the competitive nature here.

So yeah, I think it's going to be a lot of fun. And so last night, earlier this week, I should say, by the time you're listening to this, earlier this week, we did our monthly Ask Us Anything Live. And so on the Ask Us Anything Live, we figured out, we decided, we determined the order in which we're going to plan the trip. So, so far, we know the order, and we're going to keep it kind of a mystery from each other. So Greg is going to take the first two days of the trip because he's going to be the one making all the booking. So he'll be the one person who knows what's going on, at least knows the travel arrangements that everybody is proposing. So so Greg will take the first two days and then he passes the baton to Stephen and Stephen's job will be to plan the second two days. Now, Greg hasn't yet planned the first two days. So Steven can't plan the next two days because he

doesn't know where Greg is going to have us. We're flying into Tokyo, but that doesn't mean that we're going to have to stay in Tokyo. So Greg will plan whatever he does. And then when he finishes planning, he'll let Steven know and Steven will pick up the baton from there and plan his two days, which again might bring us to a totally different place. And so then he up the baton from there and plan his two days, which, again, might bring us to a totally different place. And so then he passes the baton on to Carrie, letting her know where he's leaving off. And and she will be having the unenviable task of not only planning a couple of days, but getting us back to Tokyo in time for our first class flight back to San Francisco, back to the United States. So she'll have her two days. Then in the Americas, I will pick up the baton next.

And so my two days begin from San Francisco. And I have sort of the world being my oyster to plan our two days from there. And then Tim will plan the last few days, last two days, rather, of the challenge. Once I finish planning my part, then I'll let him know where he's starting and he will be challenged to come up with things that, you know, are exceed everybody else's days. So, so we're going to plan this all in advance, but one at a time so that, you know, we can plan our thing and then let the next person know where their challenge sort of begins. Yeah.

Great. All right. All right. All right. So I'm excited. I can't wait to get into the challenge. And we're going to be defining it more as we go. We don't have, for example, those bonus opportunities well-defined yet. But that will be coming soon.

We're getting there. We're getting there. All right. Awards we booked this week. Greg, you book anything interesting this yes i did i i booked uh a vacasification rental and i enjoyed that experience so much i booked another one so um i took advantage as i said earlier in the show i took advantage of the wyndham award sale or point sale to buy points. So after I

booked the first one, I was low on points. So I booked the maximum allowed 60,000 points and used some of them for the second booking. But I want to talk a little bit about the first booking. So I had been looking for, there's two couples were going to be traveling to Hawaii. And so I'd been looking at two bedroom opportunities. And the first thing I thought I was going to do, there was a Hyatt destination property, which are like condos. They're mostly like condos. Some of them, some destination properties are like full houses you get, but think of them like condos or timeshare type of places. And what I saw on

Hyatt's website was that both one bedroom and two bedrooms were available for points and two bedrooms were classified as standard suites. So I thought it'd be possible to book the standard room, the one bedroom apartment for 25,000 points per night, and then apply a suite upgrade to get into a two bedroom suite. And I thought that'd be pretty good. 25,000 points per night for a two bedroom in Hawaii at a very well-reviewed resort um but my uh my high concierge said nope this property is not participating in sweet uh sweet night awards so i couldn't do that so i participate in defining a standard suite but not letting you book it you can book it with points but not it with points, but not with the upgrades certificate.

Not with the upgrades certificate. So that was a bummer. But then I started looking at other options and, you know, I found that Vacasa was looking awfully good. So as you know, you can book with Vacasa any of their rental properties, which by the way, Vacasa doesn't own these. These are like independently owned condos and houses all over the Americas where Vacasa just manages the rental. And so any given unit is going to be completely different from any other. So you can't say, oh, Vacasa rentals are good or they're bad. They're just all different. Anyway, that aside, you can book them with Wyndham points for 15,000 points per bedroom per night. So we were looking at a unit, I was looking at two bedroom units that were right on the ocean, like literally like look out the window there's the ocean uh pounding against the shore that's something we

wouldn't have gotten at the hyatt by the way like you know we might have gotten an ocean view but it wouldn't have been right up against the ocean like that which which i really wanted um and so uh you know so that would have been 15 000 points per night per couple um so if you know, so that would have been 15,000 points per night per couple. So if you think of it as like, well, we can buy Wyndham points when they're on sale for about a penny each. So that's $150 per night per couple, which is pretty incredible. stays in Hawaii right now, you're going to be looking at usually probably closer to, you know, $800 for a two bedroom in that range. Or if you're looking at one bedroom, probably around $500 a night. And especially if you look after taxes and fees. So, so 150 per couple, but I have the Wyndham earner business card. So that, that gives me that 10% discount. So it's really $135 per bedroom per couple.

So outrageous deal. But then I found a three bedroom unit that was so spectacular looking. It's, it's, it's a two story unit. The, it has a, its own like steam room. It's got a, you know, hot tub. It's got just-story unit. It has its own steam room.

It's got a hot tub. It's got just all kinds of, it just looks spectacular. And you know me. I like to use my points to do things that I wouldn't normally do. A little wow factor in there, right? Yeah. there right yeah i mean would i normally book a uh like a rental unit that would cost over 4800 for four nights no i wouldn't normally do that right even if i'm splitting the costs with another couple um but uh this cost me 162 000 points for the four nights. And so that's like, if you thought about,

if you imagine that I just bought the points outright for a penny each, that's just over $1,600 or $800 per couple for four nights in an You know, unit right on the ocean. I mean, come on, you know, would you pay $200 a night instead of the $135 for a good one, but not outrageous? So that's what it came to. And we're very excited about that. Yeah, that's awesome. That's, you know, there are some really nice Vacasa properties like that. And you kind of have to hunt them out a little bit.

I mean, you have to look around a little because it's not as intuitive as i feel like hotel searches where you're you know you know which town you're looking in kind of a thing with vacasa it's a little harder to know which towns are they going to be in so i find it easier to start by searching by state and then looking at the map view and kind of zooming around that can be you know a way to look and then looking at it. And they don't let you sort by price, I don't think. There's no sort by price. So you have to filter by a price range. So I'll start with a pretty high price range so that I can hopefully look at the nicest places to begin with. Of course, nicest places won't always be the most expensive, but at least it gives me like a frame of reference to start at. So it's kind of a pain. It's not exactly like searching for hotels

in that regard, but the payoff can be pretty sweet. It really, it really can be. And, and one tip that I found is like, you know, I knew we wanted two full bathrooms. We don't want to share a bathroom with other couples. So setting the minimum number of bathrooms to two really helped weed out a lot of properties. And so that was a good way to start. And if you knew roughly where geographically you want to be, you can hone in on the map to that area and then click the search here button. And so that's what I did to limit my search and then click the search here button. And so that's what I did to limit my search. And then scroll down, basically bypassing the ones. They show how many stars they got from reviews and bypass the ones that are like,

you know, less than four and a half stars kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very good. Good strategy there. All right, awesome. I mean, I can't wait to see what that turns out like. I can't wait to read the review on that one. For me, awards book this week, very simple, very short and sweet. We've written before about the fact that you can gift Hyatt Free Nights. Now, you might know about

guest of honor bookings. Globalists can make a guest of honor booking for somebody else and they get globalist benefits. But it's not, well, the ability to gift a stay is not limited to globalists. Giving the benefits is limited to globalists. But for instance, my wife had two Hyatt Category 1 to 4 free night certificates. She's a World of Hyatt credit card holder, so she had one for her anniversary and one from spend sitting in her account. And we had occasion to book a Category for Hyatt that was actually peak priced in terms of awards. So it was 18,000 points per night. But my wife doesn't have any status with Hyatt and I have globalist status. And of course, we would prefer to be able to get

free breakfast and things like that. So she called Hyatt and said that she would like to gift her free night certificates to me. And it was a very simple, easy phone call. They were able to do that. So those certificates were booked in my name and with my World of Hyatt account number. Now, you can't call and say you want to book with a certificate for somebody else. Or at least I think if you say it that way, they'll say, oh, no, you can't do that. But you are able to gift them to someone. So she essentially gifted them to me.

Now we'll get my globalist benefits on the stay with her free night certificates. So people are often wondering how you can do that or if you can do that. And with Hyatt, it actually is possible to do so. So I just wanted to mention that both A for the fact that you're able to do it and B for the fact that those category one to four free night certificates can be kind of nice or the category one to sevens, because remember that they still work even when the property is peak priced within its categories. So we'll get a little bit of extra value, so to speak, out of it since it would have been an 18,000 point per night property. Yeah. And I know what you're thinking, listener. Ooh, can I do the same thing with my spouse's Marriott certificates? Nope. And the answer is no. Nope. Nope. There's a

lot of things that you can do with Hyatt that you can't do with Marriott. Sorry. And that's a big one. And where Marriott's IT is not exactly spectacular, they do a spectacular good job of preventing you from sharing your certificate with somebody else right right thanks for that marriott okay so that was the words we booked this week now it is time for the main event main event sky miles strike back a couple things in the news recently sorry suddenly thank you for the sound of the empire music come on the empire music it's like the the Empire music. Come on, the Empire music. It's like Darth Vader. Suddenly, we're looking at our Delta points in a different way. We've been posting time after time about how Delta miles have devalued.

Just if you look in the last two or three years, there's so many posts where it's like, oh, now this award is more expensive or you can no longer book partners at these lower rates and blah, blah, blah. So that's been disappointing. So finally, we have two things to talk about where miles have gone the other direction. So first, the Delta credit cards, all the ones that have annual fees, at least everyone that's called the gold, platinum or Delta reserve card, all have the capability now that if you're logged into your account things like, oh, all they did was raise their award prices and then He said, you know, three weeks ago, we booked for this amount. And when we look today, which today was like right after this capability came into play, you know, when we look today, the price was this much more, but with the 15% discount, it's very close to what it was when we booked. So therefore, you can see that Delta, what they're pretending is like this great new benefit is really a scam. It's basically a stealth devaluation that's basically saying you're not going to get the value that you got before unless you own one of our credit cards. Okay. So, so that's the kind of, um, you know, talk that's been going around about this, the, the negativity. So, um, so, you know, my reaction was, well, wait a minute. Um, Delta award prices are heavily, heavily based on the cash prices. And cash prices often go up over time for the same flight.

So we would expect the same thing to happen with the miles. For example, as you get closer in time to departure, the cheapest seats have all sold out often. And so if you do a search again, it's going to be higher. There could just be variances because of competitive pressures and whatnot that make the airfare change all the time. So the award changes all the time. So I didn't think much about these examples. They weren't good evidence.

So what we really needed, I believe, was to look at what was the ratio of the cost of flights to the number of miles required. So the cash to mile ratio before this came into play and after, and has that changed? So luckily, almost exactly two years ago, I did an analysis of what Delta miles are worth. And so I collected for a bunch of flights, I collected the cash price and the point price. And then I calculated, you know, okay, points are worth, you know, 1.3 cents on average. That was my median value. And so what I did was I did the exact same analysis again. So I took the same parameters that I used last time. I said, I'm going to look three months into the future at the closest Wednesday to the day I'm doing my analysis and look for all the flights for that

particular Wednesday. So I kept everything as similar as I could, collected all the data and compared what was the value of points then and now. And then in 2021, the median value was 1.3 cents per point. Today, 1.3 cents per point if you round to just one decimal place. If you go out to two decimal places though, in 2021 it was 1.28, today 1.35. So it actually went up just a fraction, not enough for me to say that it changed. But the point is, I used the point price before the 15% discount. So the point is, if we say the value hasn't changed, even though it's gone up just a smidge, then we can say, hey, look, this 15% discount is real. And so when I calculate the value of points with the discount, the median goes up to 1.59.

So round off to 1.6, which is pretty phenomenal, actually. Now, in this analysis, I did in a further adjustment where I adjusted for the fact that you don't earn miles on award flights. And so that brings the value down a little bit. So the previous in 2021, the adjusted value rounded down to 1.2, whereas the new one rounds up to 1.3, the adjusted median. And this is before the 15%. Right.

And today, if you use the 15%, if you get that, it goes to 1.5. Wow. 1.6, 1.5 when you adjust for not earning miles for the flight. So pretty darn good. I had long accepted the fact that my Delta SkyMiles were not often going to get way outsized value. And so I started thinking of them more like Southwest points where you can often usually get better than one cent per point value. And so I thought of them like, they're a little bit better than pennies. Now they're 50% better than pennies.

Yeah. I mean, that's a pretty significant difference. And I think that for anybody who tuned out the math on that, the gist of it is that anecdotal stories don't mean much because what the word cost last week versus next week, like Greg said, that changes all the time. What doesn't typically change wildly is the comparison of the number of miles required versus the cash cost. And so that analysis is much more reliable than an anecdotal story about an award you looked at three weeks ago. If you look at whatever today's cash price is versus the mileage price, and then three weeks ago. If you look at whatever today's cash price is versus the mileage price, and then three weeks ago, if you had recorded the cash price and the

mileage price, likely based on this analysis, that ratio is going to be about the same. So miles, if anything, have become a little bit more valuable, you're saying. So this discount, yeah, I mean, that's terrific. That's a great way to have looked at it. And I think a much more valuable way than like picking an award here and an award there. Right. And you know, the analysis is not that hard to do. So we can redo it a year from now and, you know, and, and sort of keep Delta on it. So, you know, because people might say, well, they might not have reduced or raised the prices yet, but they will. We'll see. We'll see.

We'll see. But as of right now, it's a true discount. So that's great news. And I think it makes sense. I mean, I think it makes sense for them to offer that. That's a great reason to keep the card. And obviously, Delta wants people to keep the card and the issuer, MX in this case, wants people to keep the card. So I think it's a really good idea.

It encourages people to keep the cards. So I think it's a really good idea. It encourages people to use the miles. And when they use the miles, they feel more value from the miles. And that's what you want them to experience so that they'll keep coming back and earning more of them, right? So, I mean, this just seems like a win-win. It seems like a really smart idea.

I actually have faith that Delta isn't going to mess this up, so to speak. They probably aren't going to turn this into a thing where it's a stealth evaluation. I don't think it makes sense to. I think this is a good, valuable benefit that's going to bring them more business. Yeah, I certainly hope so. And, you know, I know that Amex has to be the happiest of all about this because they paid a fortune for the exclusive rights to Delta. And here's an example where their cardholders are going to be happier because they're getting more value from their miles. And their cardholders are also going to be incentivized to keep their cards if they're

thinking of canceling and new cardholders are going to jump on board without a doubt because of this so uh amex uh wins all around and uh you know i think delta does too as you said and and of course the consumer as long as you have one of the cards um does really well yeah yeah if you have one of the cards you're going to redeem sky miles i mean this is a great way to help offset the annual fee and if you look at wow i'm getting better value out of the miles depends on how many you redeem and there's a lot of variables there but i feel like it could certainly make those cards worth keeping you know for somebody like yeah and yeah and each of the cards has benefits that could make them worth keeping already yeah as long as you fly delta a moderate amount so you know free check bags for example example, with the Delta gold, um, Delta platinum, uh, a companion

ticket every time you renew, um, uh, and Delta reserve, uh, also a companion ticket, a better one, and, um, also, uh, access to the sky clubs, um, or even centurion lounges when you're flying Delta same day. So, uh, a lot of benefits that can make them worth it. Sure. And then, of course, this is a great value on top of that. Yeah, I agree. I agree. All right. So Delta strikes back with the 15% discount that at least as of now seems to be a real 15% discount or thereabouts anyway, a real value add anyway. So what about booking awards outside of the United States? Because this 15%, I imagine, is probably most useful on those domestic awards. Or maybe is it only useful on domestic awards?

Can it even be applied to international awards? It's only useful on itineraries that are exclusively on Delta. Okay. So if you're flying a partner, you don't get that 15% discount, even if it's just one small segment. So like, let's say you're flying to a Hawaiian Island and Delta flies to Honolulu and then their partner Hawaiian Air flies that short little flight over to, you know, wherever the big Island, let's say, you don't get the discount. So you're better off booking to Honolulu, get the discount and then separately buy a ticket either on Southwest or Hawaiian for that

last little jump. Very good. Okay. But you also separately recently wrote about the fact that there are still good opportunities to get decent value out of Delta Miles for international business class awards, which, I mean, that sentence might seem very unbelievable for anybody who's done a lot of searching on delta.com over these last few years. So how, how can you get good value booking business class, international business class awards? Let me explain this a little bit first that, that, uh, so, so it used to be, uh, you could sometimes get good value right on Delta itself for flying, let's say, US to Europe. And then it changed to where the only opportunity to get good value for business class using Delta miles was if you flew a partner.

Like, so if you booked, for example, Air France to Europe, then you sometimes could get really good values. And then that went away. But what I found was it's not all partner awards that devalued in that way. Instead, it's all awards that start or end in the US or Canada where the cost is astronomic. So by astronomic, I mean, like, if you're going to Europe, you're paying at least, you're paying over 200,000 one way for business class, for example. If you're going to South Africa or Australia, you're probably paying over 400,000 one way, usually. I mean, sometimes you see like 250,000 or somewhere in that range, but those are the kind of numbers you'll see.

What I discovered about a week ago and published about a week ago, I think, was that if you don't touch the U.S. or Canada at the beginning or end, you might touch it in the middle. You can find these deals that they used to have. So for example, you could fly from between Mexico and Australia in business class for 95,000 points one way. And the majority of that could be entirely on Delta. So for example, it could be Mexico City to LA to Sydney. And the LA to Sydney is all Delta one suites. Um, and 95,000 points, you know, again, versus hundreds of thousands. If you book from LA to Sydney, um, same thing, Mexico to or from South Africa, 95,000 Mexico to or from Europe, 75,000, um, South America to Europe, 80,000 to 90,000. Mexico to or from Asia, 90,000. So

these are compared to what you'd pay with Delta Miles directly from the US or from Canada. Fantastic deals. But I don't live in Mexico, Greg. I live in the United States. What do these matter to me? I mean, how are they relevant to me if they're all going to and from? I mean, it's great if you live in Mexico City, but I'm guessing we don't have a large listenership in Mexico City. So how are these useful? Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, if you find one of these great deals from Mexico City as an example, you can position there, start your trip in Mexico City, enjoy the city maybe for a couple of days or just go right from one plane to another, depending on what you want to do and go from there.

Now, on the way back, you could, when the airplane stops in LA or Atlanta or wherever it stops, you could just get off and go home from there. Or when you get back to Mexico City, you can book a separate flight back home from there. So we've talked a lot in past episodes about the dangers of often leaving off a segment at the end. And so, you know, I would do that occasionally. I don't think that would be a problem getting off in Atlanta or LA or wherever, but it wouldn't do it multiple times a year because at some point Delta is going to be like, hey, stop that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't want them to shut down your account. Yeah, they might be less friendly about saying stop that. They may say stop that because you don't have an account anymore. So yeah, you don't want to probably shut down your account. Yeah, they might be less friendly about saying stop that. They may say stop that because you don't have an account anymore. So, yeah, you don't want to probably do it again and again. But once in a while, I find this much more useful returning to the United States or returning to Mexico, I should say, via the United States. Because that's the thing about these awards.

When Greg is saying, you know, 75K from Mexico to or from Europe, I think for the most part, we're not talking about Aeromexico flights to and from Europe. We're talking about flights between the United States and Europe with the connection to or from Mexico City. Now, if you book that from Mexico City, you're going to have to get yourself to Mexico City because you can't skip that first leg. And the way back, as we've talked about it, it's up to you what you want to do with that. But you can go back and listen to last week's show, the Hidden City Ticket to you what you want to do with that. But you can go back and listen to last week's show, The Hidden City Ticket Show, if you want to find more about that. But bottom line is this could certainly be useful. I was joking when I said I don't live in Mexico City. How is this useful for me? The bottom line is it could certainly be useful. I've never been

to Mexico City, and I would totally consider it, even as someone who doesn't live anywhere near Mexico City. If you live in the southern part of the middle part of the country, Texas, Arizona, whatever, I can't imagine it's that far. It's only a couple of hours, probably, flight to Mexico City. So it's not even a terribly onerous positioning flight. And I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that there's a Centurion Club in the Mexico City Airport. At least there used to be, I think, a Centurion Lounge. There could be. I have no idea, actually. I think there is. So maybe I'm wrong.

Somebody correct me in the comments if I am. But I think there at least used to be a Centurion Lounge there. So you may even get a decent lounge experience while you're there if you're a Platinum cardholder or a Delta Reserve, an A Amex platinum card holder or a Delta Reserve card holder, not a Delta platinum card holder, then you get yourself Centurion Lounge access, presumably also some. So, OK, you know, I think that those are really interesting. I think it's also worth keeping that in mind, that knowledge in mind for your more complicated international trips, because I think there must also be some other opportunities, I would guess, on partners connecting regions that aren't in the United States. I mean, we've often found before that there are some great values to be had on awards that connect to non-United States regions, you

know, to regions that are outside of, you know, our realm. So if you want to build a more complicated trip with a few stops in it, Delta is worth sometimes checking out and looking at. I mean, it's not going to hurt you to look at it. And of course, if you want to make it really easy, then tools like AwardLogic or Point.me will search multiple programs and they'll search Delta and let you know

if there's a good Delta option on the route that you're searching. But it's certainly a program to keep in mind for those types of situations where you're connecting two dots that are not the United States. Yeah. So real quick, Nick, I'm going to give you a little quiz here. So these tricks give you great value with Delta miles, but they're not the cheapest. Delta is still not the cheapest program to get to these places for most of these cases. So I'm just going to say, if instead of going from Mexico to Australia for 95 K, you want to go from the U S to Australia,

what's in business class, what's, what's a good alternative. Well, if you find an American airlines, uh, you like saver web special award, I had a couple of examples included in a recent post where it was 60,000 miles one way in business class on American with a connector. be widely available so you're like a word chart sweet spot i i think 80 000 points via life miles would be your best bet do you do you know if i'm wrong on that um doesn't alaska have oh oh for sure they do and i'm flying them so i'm using their miles anyway yes 55 000 miles one way in business class on either Qantas or Fiji uh using Alaska miles so and and you could include a connector on Alaska within the United States if you need to like position to the west coast for instance sweet all right so so if you have Alaska miles those are worth more than

than uh Delta to get to Australia uh how to south africa for 95 000 can you beat that 95 000 one way you sure business class you sure can i mean it you know ana has the cheapest price although the problem is that most of the airlines that fly there with ana miles you're going to get hit with some surcharges but 104 000 miles round trip with ana uh to south africa you can't beat that. 52K each way. That's just such a ridiculous deal. How about if you just want to fly one way, what would you do?

So there's a number of programs that charge around 75,000 miles. Turkish Miles and Smiles comes to mind. It's somewhere in that range. United also, I think, is about 80,000 miles one way. The other option is potentially Air Canada Aeroplan. That's a distance-based chart. So it's probably going to cost you at least 90,000 to get to South Africa. Maybe it'll be a full 110, but you could build in a stopover for 5,000 miles on a one-way with no surcharges. So you can fly Lufthansa, for instance, and stop in Germany on your way to South Africa.

So those would be things I'd consider. The other option is American Airlines miles, 75,000 points one way. If you can get Q suites then on Qatar, then that would be a great option. All right. I thought you were going to forget that one. That was going to happen, but that's my favorite.

Okay. How about just getting to Europe? To Europe? I mean, you got lots of options. So I mean, the cheapest to Europe is going to be probably Iberia business class, 34,000 miles one way off peak from the eastern cities to Europe. If you're looking for a non-peak, off-peak, seasonal type of a situation, 45,000 miles one way with Turkish miles and smiles would be a one way price, a good one way price. Now you're going to get hit with surcharges on Lufthansa group. But if you fly United or tap air Portugal or SAS, then you'll have no surcharges. A lot Polish is

going to be low a hundred bucks or so. Uh, so those are good options there. If you can fly round trip on any of those airlines that I just mentioned, then ANA is an even better deal at 88,000 miles round trip. So that's like 44 K each way. Yeah. And then don't, don't forget just a little bit higher Virgin Atlantic 50,000 miles to fly Delta Delta one. Right.

So all those, all those options are still cheaper as, as far as you know, number of miles required. And you could actually start from the United States if that's your preference instead of from Mexico. However, the point is lots of us have lots of Delta miles. That's the thing, yeah. And so we found that you can get actually incredible value if you're willing to start and end other than in S or Canada. And, um, you know, and then, you know, don't forget what we talked about

before that new 15% discount. If you're a card holder makes your miles way more valuable than they were for Delta flights themselves. Pretty awesome combination. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very good. Yeah. And I think the point on Delta, you know, for, for me is I don't redeem Delta miles. I've never had a Delta credit card. I have very many Delta miles. However, I know, for me is I don't redeem Delta miles. I've never had a Delta credit card. I have very many Delta miles. However, I know that there's a lot of people that have tons of Delta miles between the credit cards and the spend to maintain status and the obviously flight activity. And so if you're in that boat and you've got a million or 2 million or however many Delta miles, these are awesome because suddenly you've got chances to get really good value out of those miles.

So, yeah, I wouldn't transfer membership rewards points to take advantage of these, you know, because Amex is going to charge you a fee, an excise tax for transferring to Delta. So, I mean, unless there was no other option, I probably wouldn't be transferring membership rewards points for this. But if you've got a ton of Delta miles, I mean, these are great. These are great deals. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Okay. That brings us, I think, to this week's question of the week. Right? got a ton of delta miles uh i mean these are great these are great deals yes yeah yeah all right okay

that brings us i think to this week's question of the week right so this week's question came in via email from david and david loves the show and and he's uh you know getting into planning some trips he actually just really kind of got into this in april of 2022 and already has a pretty fantastic trip to europe planned. But I'm going to skip through some of his email in order to get to the key question. So he has Hyatt points. He's got some great Hyatt's book, Park Hyatt, Zurich, Park Hyatt, Vienna, Park Hyatt, New York, et cetera. But unfortunately, Hyatt's aren't everywhere and we need a hotel card as only Hyatt makes sense to even transfer to. Right. So you want to have a hotel card. As only Hyatt makes sense to even transfer to, right?

So you want to have a hotel card. So how would you choose between Marriott, Hilton, and IHG? Which program is easiest to rack up points? We do have three kids. And while this trip is just me and the wife, we do plan on future trips with the kids. Which program has the best properties for families? What other factors do you think go into deciding which program to use? Obviously, with hotels, you eventually have to spend cash, but which program offers the best overall value? Finding it really difficult to choose. So if Hyatt is your primary, how do you choose your secondary? And specifically, again, I think the question here was aimed at, when it comes to selecting a hotel card, so both for the bonus and any benefits, spending, the ability to rack up more points,

what's next after Hyatt? Yeah, well, I really think Dave should be looking at a cashback or cash equivalent opportunity because there's so many great hotels around the world that you're going to be locked out of if you only look at hotel points. And so, you know, if you have a card that either directly earns cash back or earns points that are redeemable for travel, you could raise travel charges, then you can really stay anywhere and enjoy whatever hotel you find. You know, after that, I mean, gosh, I think it just, if you really want to, you know, dive into another program, it, it,

it depends so much on what you're trying to accomplish. I think that all of the, all the major programs have are decent opportunities to get cards where you get an annual free night certificate. And if you are sure you can use those each year, then, you know, you and your spouse can each, uh, each get one or sometimes more than one of the cards, depending on what type of card it is. Um, and, and have some nights that are not for free every year, but cost around 95 bucks for the annual fee of the card, basically. So I think that's what I'd be looking at next is you can, you can get some Marriott cards, each have an IHG card, for example, and, and just, you know, more than cover the annual fees based on using those annual free

night certificates you get when you renew? Yeah, you know, this, I feel like this is a pretty tough question. Because if you ask me my favorite, like brands for families that are not Hyatt brands, I really come to like residence in and that's funny, because I don't, there's things about residence and that I don't like every time we stay at one. But overall, the room sizes tend to be great. And while you often will book into a studio with points or a free night certificate, if you have any elite status with Marriott, which is pretty easy with the credit cards, then I often get upgraded or I'll just ask for the one bedroom suite or two bedroom suite and often get an

upgrade to that for free at residents in properties. So I feel like that can be a good path because you can get the business Marriott card and the consumer Marriott cards from Amex, you get both of those, then you're going to have 30 nights right off the bat every year. So 20 additional nights is going to get you the platinum status with Marriott that gets your free breakfast when you stay at places that aren't residence. And so I think it's an easy path to elite status. It's a decent number of points to start, and it's two pretty good free night certificates. If both you and player two get the cards, then that's four free night certificates a year. But it is a lot in annual fees since the brilliant card is so expensive now. So it's a little tough because you're not going to continue to generate

points. You're going to probably just lean on your free night certificates every year after you blow through the welcome bonuses. So I'm a little hesitant on that strategy. I might lean a little bit more towards Hilton. And the odd thing is that I don't like Hilton's like more family oriented properties as much. But if you get the surpass card, six points per dollar at supermarkets. So you could rack up a lot of spend. If you've got three kids, I'm betting you buy a lot of food at the supermarket. And if your kids like fruit the way mine do, then you're going to earn a lot of points,

6X. So it's a pretty easy card. Also gas station 6X on that card, I believe. So 5X, I can't recall right now. But at any rate, easy way to rack up points on ongoing spend. And it's not necessarily going to be the very best value out there for those categories of spend, but it'll be reasonable. So you can get a pretty good return. And then of course, an annual free night certificate for spending 15 K on the surpass card.

So, so, and the aspire card is an even better value, arguably. So I think if your goal is to continue to generate hotel points i would probably go with hilton surpasses for both you and player two and maybe somebody gets an aspire uh even though i think the marriott strategy is the one that i probably follow more closely yeah let me let me uh correct something you said earlier uh you said

if you get both of the uhmex Marriott cards, you'd have 30 Elite Knights per year. Oh, right. The Brilliant card now gives you Platinum status automatically. I'm sorry. Which is probably all you need. Plus, it also gives you 25 Elite Knights. So with 15 from the Business card, you'd have 40.

But you don't really need them because you're getting Platinum status automatically. Well, no, no, no, no. I'm going to disagree with you. You might want them. Let me just add one thing. You might want to later downgrade to the $95 consumer Marriott card to reduce annual fees. And then you'd be back down to the 30 elite nights that Nick mentioned. What were you going to disagree about?

I'm glad that you corrected me on this because, my goodness, how did I forget that? Yeah, so that's a great point. And having the platinum status from the get go could certainly be useful for you. Now, Greg said to the 40 elite nights really don't matter, probably because you're gonna get the platinum status from the brilliant card. But I might argue that that's still great, because it's 40 nights right off the bat, you only need to spend 10 nights a year and you're going to have the 50 night. You're going to hit the 50 night choice benefit. And so even though you won't get any additional status, you're still just a platinum status. You get the choice benefit and you can take the Sweet Night Awards.

Now, Marriott Sweet Night Awards don't clear all the time. In fact, they clear pretty rarely. I think most people that have ever had them have probably had some of them expire without being used. So I don't want to present them as though they're the most valuable thing. But I've certainly had good luck with those at like residence and family type properties using them for like two bedroom suites. So you're not going to get a suite every single time. But if you're like a family traveler and staying at those like mid range type, more extended stay type properties,

I think you got a much better shot at your suite upgrade award clearing than at like the St. Pancras London where, I mean, I got lucky and I got one to clear, but it's probably not going to clear more often than, than not for most people. So,

so anyway, I think that, you know, putting you 10 nights short of that is, is pretty good. You know, if you're going to spend at least 10 nights a year in hotels anyway. So, yeah, all right.

So Marriott, potentially a strong strategy, not going to continue to generate points, though, because you're not going to want to put much spend on those cards, probably. So that's the downside that eventually you're just going to be paying for the hotels and using the free night certificates with that method. If you want to generate points, I think Hilton is the way to go. And that's not to dismiss IHG. They've got a lot of extended stay properties that would be good for families also. But again, I probably wouldn't do a ton of spend on IHG cards. Although I say that maybe the diamond status will be so well worth it that that could be a good option. So basically we didn't help you at all, David. We just said all of them could be a good option. So I'm sorry for that. Yeah, and don't forget the Citi Premier card gives you 3X on a whole lot of categories, including grocery stores and transfers to Choice 1 to 2.

So that's like earning 6X in all those categories at Choice. So you have to look at Choice's footprint isn't great, especially at the higher end. Depends on what you're good with with your family, but that's definitely worth considering as well. Yeah, and you know, when I mentioned the high, the family properties rather with Marriott, I think that something worth mentioning

if you haven't looked into this much and if you have a relatively young family, maybe you haven't. The reason that I lean a little bit more towards Marriott probably is that they have a lot more of those residence in type properties abroad than I like Hilton. I don't know what their comparable thing is like element I get or not element that's Marriott embassy suites. I just don't see many embassy suites in Europe or other parts of the world, whereas you do still see residence in. So that's part of the reason I lean towards Marriott.

But anyway, that answers that with an everything answer. So best of luck to you in figuring that out, David. But that brings us to the end for this week. So if you've enjoyed today's show and you wanna keep hearing us ramble on about that stuff, David, you wanna go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Join our email list

wherever you're watching this show give us a like leave us some feedback subscribe all that stuff helps out the channel wherever it is you're listening to us so thank you very much for all that and if you have a question that you'd like to be considered for a future question of the week episode or some feedback you can send that to mailbag at frequent miler.com. Bye everybody.